At Forest school improvement club this week we have made a good start with planting some herbs, flowers, bulbs and seeds into our new Butterfly and Bee garden. 

In Science we have been investigating the properties of materials. Today, the children worked in pairs to build a wall using materials that they thought would withstand strong wind. As the children were working, they were using fantastic language for example, 'we will have to make sure it's a fair test when we try to blow it down.'

Forest School was a great success this week for the Tawny Owls. They got to light fires using steel and flint. They listened wonderfully to the instructions and many of the children had a great technique to get a spark. While children weren't doing this activity they were busy creating prints, by crushing flowers and plants using mallets. 
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To celebrate the fact that Spring has begun, all of the children across the school have created a piece of art for the village display. We hope everyone in the community enjoys looking at the artwork! 

This week at forest school improvement club we began digging up the area for our new flower and herb garden. The children worked really hard this week and can't wait to hopefully start some planting in the weeks before Easter. A huge thank you to those who have already donated any plants, seeds, bee bombs or compost, it really is appreciated. 

Today the Owlets went on a village walk to spot the signs of Spring. 

During assembly today, the children spoke about Spring and how to care for and nurture living things. All the children had the opportunity to plant a sunflower seed, which they will take home with them and take responsibility for. We can't wait to see the results!

The Tawny Owls enjoyed raising money for Comic Relief today by wearing something red. They watched a video of a boy called Teddy to help them to understand where some of the charity money will go. 

We wore red and and discussed how we can help others. We found out that Comic Relief raises money to help people live free from poverty, violence and discrimination. This includes funding organisations that are supporting people right now in Ukraine, and those attempting to cross the border. We have the power to change lives. 

We used play dough to help us to investigate equivalent fractions. 

We learnt an extract from our new class text: An Anthology of Intriguing Animals. We used actions to help us to remember and retell the information from the book. 

The Snowy Owls are developing their tennis techniques including the ready position. 

The children learnt so much from their First Aid Mini Medic course with Joe Rice. We are very grateful to FoBS who made the sessions possible. 

During World Book Day, the Snowy Owls built their own reading dens and snuggled up with their favourite book. 

Barn Owls are continuing to learn a range of catchy short songs. The children's pitch and timing is very commendable.

Medic and trainer Joe Rice gave us all some essential life skills on Friday with a thorough and very enjoyable First Aid course.

It was wonderful to see older and younger children mixing and reading books they enjoy together on Thursday.
Weekly paired reading takes place each week for Owlets and Barn Owls, and it's one of the highlights of the week for both classes.

Despite the chilly conditions, a suggestion of summer came to Barn Owls on Tuesday, as we practised tennis skills.

We were delighted with the amount of entries for our World Book Day competition; reading in an unusual place. Thank you all for taking your time to send in some amazing pictures. There were children reading in supermarkets, gyms and cupboards. At the top of tors, cars and fridges. Some were on rollercoasters in gardens and rivers. This shows how easy it is to take a book wherever you want and promote a love for reading.

The winning photos are shown here, congratulations to Cedric, Freya, Thomas and Eben!

The children had great fun creating clay models of forest animals in the environmental area. We had supers-sized bugs chasing small woodland animals such as, deer for our display. Over the coming weeks, we are going to see how the weather alters our animals.

The Tawny Owls created their very own bookmarks to celebrate World Book Day. All the children coloured whilst listening to a story and then created tassels to decorate it. They are fantastic and we hope that it brings even more enjoyment to their reading.

It was lovely to be able to mix classes this afternoon for a quality book share across all year groups. The children thoroughly enjoyed reading to each other and as the teachers went around the different pairs/groups, they heard amazing book talk happening. We then had an assembly where we spoke about the reason behind this celebration. Children spoke with great confidence about this, ranging from a year 1 pupil saying, 'because it charges our brain' to a year 6 pupils response explaining, 'it's good to have book knowledge passed down from generation to generation'. Promoting a love for learning is vital in a child's development and shared reading is a crucial part of this. 

The Snowy Owls have worked hard to present their final dragon stories for our class book. They have focused on their handwriting ensuring that letters are consistent in size and joined correctly. 

A massive thank you to FoBS who have kindly funded some real plants for the Snowy Owl classroom. The plants really enhance our learning environment and it's great to bring the outside in!